Root Cellars 101- Root Cellar Design, Use and Mistakes to Avoid

A root cellar is a great option to include in your food storage plan, since they require no energy to use and require very little maintenance. It’s great if you can build in a root cellar when your home is under construction, but it’s also possible to add a root cellar to your basement, or build one outside your home. Root cellars are a great low-cost, no-energy way to store food and extend the shelf life of fresh produce.

Types of Root Cellars and Natural Cold Storage Options

Natural cold storage options include:

Traditional earth root cellar

Earth Berm (partial or fully above ground)

Entry Root Cellar

Barrel in the ground

Traditional earth berm root cellar

This is what most of us think of when we hear the phrase root cellar. It is normally dug down as partially or fully underground structure, or dug into the side of a hill. Walls can be concrete, cinder block, or more creative materials like old tires. The only thing you need is something that will keep the walls from collapsing and something that can support the roof safely. Engage an engineer to help ensure safety.

Earth Berm Root Cellar

Above ground root cellars are usually partly sunken with earth mounded on 3 sides and the door avoiding the direct sun. See the Above Ground Root Cellars post for more information.

Entry Root Cellar

During Construction you can add a root cellar without breaking the bank. Many new homes have small concrete exterior entry area. Many times this concrete has 4ft footings. When you are building have the builder put in a full footings and a door into the area under the porch. Pour the concrete as a cap, add an exterior grade door and two 4 inch vent holes and you have a root cellar. It could also be a wine cellar or safe room.

Barrel in the ground A (approximately Zones 6-9)

The size and depth depends on the zone you live in. A simple bucket, with holes drilled in the bottom and top, buried level with the soil with a bale of hay as an insulating cover will work into zone 7 and possibly into zone 6 depending on cover and conditions. The colder and hotter zones require the bucket or barrel to be deeper, and more insulation on the top to avoid the freezing surface temps.

Barrel in the ground B (approximately Zones 3-6)

Buy one large heavy duty garbage can, and a smaller garbage can that fits inside the larger one (with an inch or two gap). It is hard to find garbage cans that don't have molded handles. Both the larger garbage can and the smaller one need holes in the bottom. The inside one needs a cover with vents / screen. Cover exterior holes with screens to keep rodents out. It also needs significant insulation above it.

Prepare a hole that is deeper than the large garbage can, with rocks and gravel in the bottom to create a simple french drain. If water drains well, you will need a small amount of rocks and gravel. If soil doesn't drain well, you need to go deeper and wider so your underground storage barrel doesn't turn into a water hole. Another trick is to dig a very deep, large hole next to the garbage can hole and fill that hole with rocks. The deeper hole acts as a drain for your more shallow garbage can root cellar.

Once you have the large garbage can in the ground and secure, lower the smaller one into the larger barrel. Store food in the smaller barrel. When you need access, grab from the top or pull out the smaller barrel. This makes it easier to reach food the bottom. There are many variations on this. Search “garbage can root cellar” for examples.

Above Ground Root Cellar and Walk in Coolers – Zones 9+

For those in warmer areas, check out the posts Above Ground Root Cellars and Build Your Own Walk In Cooler with a CoolBot Controller and A/C Unit. You may not be able to store things like we northerners can, but the Above Ground Root Cellar post will give you some ideas of what you can store, plus tips for year round food production so you always have fresh, local food to enjoy. The Coolbot makes it very affordable to use a standard AC unit for chilling a cooler built into a garage or other above ground storage area.

What does a Root Cellar need?

There are five major elements that a root cellar requires:

Ventilation

Earth-shelter (Either in the basement of your home or buried outside)

Darkness

Humidity

Shelving

Root Cellar Ventilation

This is one of most common mistakes that people make when designing/installing a root cellar. They build their underground food storage airtight to keep things nice and cold, and everything spoils. Why? Because some foods give off ethylene gas, which speeds ripening (and rotting). A root cellar that is too airtight may also build up excess humidity, leading to mold and mildew.

How should you ventilate your root cellar? Use two vents, about 3-4 inches in diameter. Make sure to put screen on the outside to keep mice out! Place the vents so that one in near the top of the root cellar to exhaust stale air and ethylene gas. The other should be run down to near the floor, to drop in fresh air. 4 inch vents should be adequate for to up to around an 8’x10’ room. If your cellar is larger than this, consider additional venting. This applies to barrels as well as full root cellars larger vents for larger spaces, smaller for barrels.

Vegetables and fruits should not be stored together even though temperatures and moisture requirements are similar. As fruits such as apples and pears ripen, they give off ethylene gas which decreases the storage life of vegetables. This is especially evident with potatoes which sprout early if stored near certain fruits.

To combat spoilage from ethylene gas, segregate fruits and veggies that produce excess ethylene gas from those that are easily damaged from ethylene gas. (source)

Root Cellar Location – In the Basement or Buried Outside?

By default, the word “cellar” means “underground”. A big part of why root cellars work as well as they do is that the earth remains at a relatively constant (cool) temperature. This temperature will vary, depending on your location. Closer to the equator, and it may be cooler than air temp, but still isn’t likely to act well as a root cellar. At the opposite extreme, you have arctic permafrost, which the native folks use to store whole animals.

Retrofitting a Root Cellar in an Existing Home

For those in cooler areas, the easiest approach is typically to section off a part of the basement (or maybe even the whole basement, if you live in an old farmhouse) for root cellar storage. Old dirt floor basements without heat are great for maintaining proper temperature and humidity levels.

If you have an existing home you may be able to section off a portion of your basement for a root cellar. Select an area with an existing window if possible, and use the window for ventilation. Fill the window with exterior grade plywood, and cut the necessary vent holes through the plywood. (The plywood also helps block light.) Frame and insulate your desired storage area. You need to treat the inside of the root cellar as “outside”. Use exterior grade materials that tolerate moisture exposure. The window should be facing north so it doesn't add significant heat to the root cellar. Alternately, box out a corner and add two exterior 4inch vents, one low and one high.

Adding a Root Cellar in a New Home

If you are building new, you may want to consider locating your root cellar under your front porch like we did. Our root cellar measures about 6'x8′, which provides plenty of room for our stash of root veggies, plus gives a nice sized porch above. Typically, if you're building, new your porch floor is formed out of a concrete slab. You need to put a foundation wall under it anyway, so why not put this area to good use? Locating the root cellar outside the footprint of the home permits the root cellar to maintain cooler temperatures more easily than a cellar located within the house.

Use an exterior grade door (preferably insulated) on your root cellar to help maintain proper temperature (both in the root cellar and in the house).

Your basement root cellar should have no standard heating or cooling. Take note of ductwork or piping that runs through the ceiling above your root cellar (if any), and make sure vents or hot water pipes are well insulated so they don’t bleed heat into your root cellar. For double duty you can make the exterior sides of the root cellar shelves for canned goods and dry goods – assuming the area is cool and dry and not exposed to the sun. Those shelves can be your basement cool dry pantry. We added some shelves to our root cellar for items that need the steady cool temperature. The basement pantry temperature will swing slightly even though it is not heated or cooled directly.

Building a Root Cellar Outside the Home

For an exterior root cellar, similar rules apply – ventilation, earth sheltered and no light. A north facing door is preferred, to avoid sun beating in and heating your cellar up. Aim for at least one to two feet of soil covering the root cellar, and make sure you choose a premade option (some people have used new septic tanks) or materials that are rot resistant and can stand the weight of wet soil.

Root Cellar Lighting

Light exposure is the enemy of food storage. Every time I see people lining up their canning jars or spices on open shelves, I cringe. It looks beautiful, but light bleaches out the color and the nutrient value of foods.

In the root cellar, light exposure may lead to sprouting and green potatoes. If you’re venting through a window, cover the rest of the window. If you have a light in your root cellar so you can see your food storage better, don’t leave the light on when you’re not using it. A hunk of burlap drawn over bins of potatoes or fruit will allow ventilation while still blocking the light. A single incandescent light (switched on exterior) should provide adequate lighting (unless your room is really huge) and, if for some reason your storage gets too cold, you can always use it to introduce a little heat. Draping an old sheet over the items can reduce light exposure also.

Root Cellar Humidity – Keeping Things Moist But Not Wet

Checking the storage chart below, you’ll see that most fruits and vegetables store best with fairly high humidity. If you have a dirt or gravel floor in your root cellar, you’re in luck, because the natural ground moisture will help keep your produce damp.

Produce will give off some moisture on its own, but if you note that your produce is shriveling, your root cellar is probably too dry. Take a tip from the grocery stores, and try a little misting action with a spray bottle. Avoid getting any area too wet, as that can lead to standing water and potential mold growth. Some people left trays of water in the root cellar, but beware doing that as it can also result in bacteria or mold growth.

Root Cellar Shelving

Shelving should allow airflow and add storage. Shelves at multiple heights can be used to store different items. Good shelves make the root cellar more usable and accessible. 2×4's with a gap allow airflow, or plywood with gaps in the back will work also.

How to Store Fruits and Vegetables in the Root Cellar

This is the approach I use in our root cellar.

Onions and garlic don't mind it a little warmer and drier, so I store them in trays on higher shelves. They can sit out in your kitchen for a while, too. Storing in trays on the shelves allows for good ventilation. Also, if an onion starts to go bad, they can be spotted and removed immediately before they spoil the whole batch. My mom used to store her onions in mesh sacks, but many times one bad root would spoil a large number of those around it.

Potatoes go close to the floor where it is cooler and moister (but not wet, because too much moisture will cause rot). I cover the potatoes with burlap or landscape fabric to block out the light (and prevent green potatoes) but allow ventilation.

Track temperature and humidity to get a good long term sense of your root cellar performance. The SensePush unit can track up to 20 days with syncing with your smartphone.

A few cabbages go on the top shelf, and apples go out in the garage in a container. Pumpkins and squash go on the floor of the canning pantry or the top shelves in the root cellar, because they like it a little warmer and drier.

I store vegetables that need more moisture in buckets, bins or boxes packed with lightly dampened leaves. For us this usually means beets and carrots (I overwinter parsnips out in the garden). I tried packing vegetables in sawdust and in sand, but prefer the leaves. For me, sand stayed too moist and led to rotting, plus it made a terrible mess. Sawdust was also very messy, but better than sand. It stuck to all the little root hairs. The leaves provide moisture to keep your roots from shriveling up, but are easy to brush off with much less mess. Do use fresh leaves each year to prevent potential pathogen buildup. (Compost the used leaves.)

Recommended Root Cellar Books

The best resource we have found on root cellars is the book Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel. No matter what your location or how much space you have, the Bubels are likely to have a root cellar option that will work for you. It contains detailed explanations of how to store vegetables and fruits without electricity with specific temperature and humidity recommendations for each variety. There are also good photos and diagrams, which I really like. The Complete Root Cellar Book is more recently published, and has also gotten good reviews.

Comments

The red and white buckets have leaves in them, packed around layers of carrots and beets. I have also tried packing carrots in sawdust and sand, but have found leaves to be the cleanest option (very simple to brush off the root) and they also hold enough moisture (but not too much) so the carrots stay hydrated but don't rot.

Because we don't go through a huge amount of potatoes, I lay those out in trays on the shelves along with the onions and garlic. I keep the potatoes as low as possible because they prefer cooler temps. Last fall all shelves and half the floor space was full (this photo is from an earlier season – 2007, I think).

hmmmm…very different environment. I imagine heat and moisture are the biggest problems. If you figure something out, please let me know. Your growing season goes pretty much year round, no? So even if you were only able to keep foods a bit cooler using earth sheltering it would probably help. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂

Laurie, this is so good. I'm trying to be patient as it will probably be at least a year before we can afford to build the root cellar which will go into the side of the mountain behind our house. I'm wondering, can you section off a small area with a wall and put in extra ventilation so as to do fruits such as apples in the same root cellar? I'm also thinking that I could keep some of my dairy cultures in there – especially if the electricity were to go out. What do you think?

Amy – I'd say yes to fruit and veggies in the same cellar, just not in the same bins, especially if you ventilate properly. You've got the book, so you've got detailed recommendations for the type of cellar you're looking at building.

If you hit the temperature range you're looking for, keeping cultures in there should be no problem. Before electricity, a spring house was often the preferred option, but I'm sure folks made due with whatever they had available. The only way to know for sure will be to try it. Mine tends to stay a bit warmer than ideal, so I haven't tried it. Also, there will be an assortment of microbes associated with the food in storage, so they may influence the composition of your cultures.

I do keep cultured veggies (my sauerkraut) in small (1 gallon) crocks in my canning pantry. I bring up one crock at a time, put a quart of it in the fridge and the rest in the freezer (to keep it live but dormant). I've still got kraut packed in good condition from last fall. (Which reminds me, I need to bring up another crock this week.)

Thanks for clarifying about the fruits and veggies – that makes sense. I got my book back from my friend and thumbed through it and had seen a plan with a separate room but didn't get to read about it so I began to think it might be necessary to have two areas, but I'm glad to know that separate bins and good ventilation is all that is necessary. If I put the cultures out there, they will be sealed with lids – I'll do the actually "culturing" in the house, but would like to store them out there once they are done.Thanks for all the help on the root cellar! Happy Mother's Day!!

Ideally separate rooms would be preferred, and since you're building new you may be able to put in a partition at minimal cost, but the ventilation is the biggest factor. If you've got a way to get that gas out you should be okay.

Another useful post Laurie. We have been teetering on whether or not to stay in our (suburban) home and build a root cellar, add solar or wind backup, or move out to a more remote location that already has these things and a plentiful supply of water, but you make a cellar look so good and easy… Making decision tougher. lol.

Every decision has its good and bad side. My husband and I are debating moving, too. We love our home and our neighbors, but it's really tough being apart during the week (he works in a nearby city two hours away). There are no easy answers, especially in these economically uncertain times.

The root cellar was one of the best and easiest things we included in the house. I love it!

My dream is a root cellar. But alas we live in a very cold climate and the cellar would need to be very deep and then we will have water issues. There is no sloped land on our small lot, and the water table is high. Any ideas?

An insulated area above ground will buy you extra time in storage, too, especially in cold climate areas. We keep apples in the garage until it gets well below freezing outside.

You should see if you can find the root cellar book at your local library (If you don't care to buy a copy). They include a lot of different options for storage with minimal energy inputs, above and beyond what we normally think of as "root cellar".

What a fantastic & informative post! I'll be bookmarking it for future use! We'd love to add a root cellar, but first we need to regulate our food production and grow enough to make it worth the while 🙂 (Our potatoes were gone before the month we harvested in was out.) But I would definitely love to store more food rather than canning and freezing so much. Thanks!

What do you know about options for root cellars in the south? We don’t have basements because of the water table and my house sits on a slab on the ground, so there is no crawl space. What are my options? I’d love to learn more about this!

Angel – I don’t have any experience with southern conditions and I haven’t been able to find a good resource on the subject (if one exists). You want to use physics in your favor. Even with high heat and humidity, the ground stays somewhat cooler. Possibly not cool enough that you could have a full blown root cellar, but maybe enough to buy you some storage time. If you could build a storage area that was earth sheltered or very well insulated, even above ground, but with a floor that was gravel (not insulated), that storage area should stay cooler. Think old-fashioned spring house, where they had thick walls and a stream running through the floor. You also want to make sure to include ventilation that draws from bottom to top to carry away ethylene gas, which promotes spoilage. It might make sense to have your intake run below ground level (if you can, or have it run through a mound of dirt) to cool the air before it enters, and vent near the top to pull off the warmest air. I haven’t tried anything like this because of where I live, but that’s the direction I would take. Good luck!

I put front porch on my parents house, The walls are block 9′ tall and the floor is concrete. The ceiling of the root cellar is metal decking with concrete poured on top to make the floor of the porch above. The exterior is about 2′ out of the ground. I have an insulated exterior door going into the basement of the house. I haven’t vented it yet because I wasn’t sure what i needed to do. It gets alot of condensation on the metal decking on the ceiling year round. Your post says 2″ pipe one high, and one low. With my foundation only sticking 2′ out of ground should i run one pipe as high as i can get it and other pipe down about 18″ so it’s not too close to the ground? Or should i run an elbow and pipe down the wall for the lower pipe so it’s closer to the ground? thanks

The wall penetrations of our root cellar are at the same height. What’s different is that one of the penetrations is connected to an elbow with a tube that goes down to near floor level inside the cellar itself, and one is a straight shot in near the ceiling of the cellar. Does that make sense?

I talked it over with my husband, and we both agree that if you have the option 2 1/2 to 3 inches might be a better size for the ventilation pipes.

Yeah this makes sense. I didn’t put the size of the room in there but it’s around 8×12. I will put the vents in and try it. do you cap the intake off when it’s hot out? I live in central PA so our summers are pretty hot. Also do you think i will have trouble with freezing in the winter? It gets down around 0 plus the wind chill in the winter?

I have never had freezing issues here in Wisconsin where it is much colder, although my vents are 2 inch diameter. (I still don’t think you would freeze with larger vents. I keep it open in summer just to avoid stagnant, musty air building up. I haven’t work with them in a warmer climate such as PA, so you might need to experiment and see what works for you.

you can use a central plastic pipe to the outside with a vent cap to keep bugs out, run it in and turn down with a elbo go almost all the way to floor. Do this on each end of room. on outside put a foundation vent in center of room above ground,,,use the holes in the block and go down into the room. cut out the block and use the holes to vent through. the foundation vent should be one that will close automatically in very cold weather. my root cellar is 20 ft long and 8 ft wide. it is under a outside porch with concrete, we insulated under the concrete and put treated plywood under it to protect the insulation. works very well as we made 3 ft wide 8 ft long frames with rat wire stapled to the bottom, set it on 8 in blocks and went all the way down the 20 ft side and across 8 ft end. we store 20+ bushels of potatoes in this been with shelves above on all sides. a solid wood door opens from basement into this. Use 3 lights on ceiling with switch on outside of cellar, we have used the left over potatoes for seed for 5 years now. also store seeds for green house here also..with out venting we had a bad mold problem,,,after installing vents mold went away in a few weeks. good luck with yours

You’re right, I should correct that. Thanks for mentioning the disagreement. When I first wrote the article, I was thinking about my mom’s basement, which would get super wet at times. This was bad for storage. Potatoes do need a certain amount of moisture – more than the onions and garlic – or they’ll wrinkle up, so I should take them out of the mention with onions and garlic. They can’t be too wet, or they will rot.

Love your site and info. Being single mom with 3 kids, homeschooled, and keeping a backyard garden, (300 sq. ft). Preserving, drying everything I can Urban farming my son calls it. I wish I could build a root cellar, below or above ground. Haven’t the manpower or knowhow or $ to do. But I learn from you and do what I can do! Thank you so much!

Hi, I am trying to build my homestead. I have a tornado shelter that I hope will double a root cellar (it’s large enough to stand comfortably in, and has built in shelves. It does get rather moist in there though. I notices your comment on how a good root cellar is moist and cool, so I am hoping that’s good. There is a drainage hole in the floor to allow any water that gets in when it rains or something out, and an air vent on the top that the wind does go through.

As for the rain comment, the door to the cellar does not overhang any of the shelves, when it rains sometimes water seeps in around the side of the door where the hinges are, the shelves themselves have never actually gotten wet.

Also, what is the best way to store apples long-term? I know that cold storage is good, but I thought the coolness of the cellar was good for that, why do you store yours in the garage? How long before they start to shrivel?

Since my garage is cool (I live in Wisconsin), keeping apples stashed there in a cooler basically acts as a root cellar extension. Because our root cellar vents are a little smaller than I would prefer (and it would be a real hassle to try and punch a bigger hole in the concrete), I keep the apples separate because they produce a lot of ethylene gas, which can cause sprouting and spoilage of other root cellar items. (This is why the chart says, “Do not store with veggies”.) Optimal storage conditions are listed in the chart. The commercial apple orchards I know around here use large coolers with precise moisture and temperature control to extend shelf life.

Our garage is attached and just a few steps from my kitchen, so it’s also convenient for me to store the apples there. I use it as cool storage all winter long for a number of items, like kombucha and other beverages. To access my root cellar I need to trot down the stairs and a doorway or hallway or two. My apples usually keep until at least March if stored at the end of October, if they last that long. If they start to get soft, there’s always applesauce or fruit leather or dried apples or pie…

i have root cellar in the basement of the old houes we bought 3 years ago, so I feel blessed- now I just need to eliminate the little mice that find their way in and decimated my apples last year! I am writing to tell you that i lost my entire potato crop this year: First, it was reduced by about 60% due to vole damage. I was amazed, as last year was a huge harvest and no vole damage although I saw evidence of their tunnels. But then, I was curing them on the porch before I brought them inside, and we had an unusually cold night here in the mountains, and it did go below freezing. I thought they were okay. But now I have a bucket of mush where once were potatoes. I am heart broken! My purples and blues are all gone!!

I was okay with all the info UNTIL I got to the list where Endive (Escarole) was listed. FOLKS these are 2 different plants! Do your research! Endive is sometimes called Chicory, but NEVER EVER is it Escarole. Both are in the lettuce family. However Endive (Chicory) can be used in coffee, but Escarole is not. Escarole is used w/beans or in soup.

“Endive, commonly popular as escarole, is a green leafy-vegetable with a hint of bitter flavor. Nevertheless, this well-known salad plant is much more than just a leafy green; packed with numerous health benefiting plant nutrients such as vitamin C, vitamin A, etc.

Botanically, this perennial herbaceous leafy plant belongs to the Asteraceae (daisy) family, in the genus, Cichorium, and is closely related to chicory, radicchio, and Belgian endive (witloof). Its scientific name: Cichorium endivia.

Belgian endive or witloof is a popular winter season vegetable in Europe. It features smooth cream-colored leaves, compressed into a compact (bud-like) 10 to 12 cm long heads.”

The post continues at some length, but you get the general idea.

One thing I’ve learned about plants – it’s incredibly common for different people to use the same name to describe different species (which is why I always use the Latin names as well as common names in my wildcrafting posts).

Great post! My husband and I are thinking of building a root cellar in our attached garage. Is there helpful information in the books you shared for that specific process or do you know of other resources that would help us in that endeavour. Thanks!

I know Nancy Buebal’s books has ideas for turning just about any spots into storage. The others I haven’t read, but they are well rated and I suspect that they would also be helpful. Depending on where you live, you may also want to check out the post, “Build Your Own Walk In Cooler with a CoolBot Controller and A/C Unit“. Since you’re building above ground, you won’t have the natural thermal mass and lower ground temps to tap into. With the Coolbot and standard AC unit, you can still get very affordable cooling.

A couple of questions, you picture canned food in your root cellar. I understood that the dampness in the cellar would cause the lids to rust prematurely and they needed to be stored somewhere drier. Do you have a problem with this? I read somewhere that peat moss is a good storage material, rather than leaves or straw, have you ever experimented with it? It’s something I’d have to buy, but I think it can be reused.

On canned food in the root cellar – our root cellar tends to be a little drier than ideal. Not so great for storing veggies that need moisture, helpful for storing jars. We have a canning pantry as well, but needed more space. Even in my mom’s basement (which would get very wet in spring) and my grandmother’s basement (which we used to use as a root cellar because it was natural stone and stayed cooler and damper), the jars kept quite well for many years. My nephew ate some old canned goods that my grandmother had stored when they were cleaning out the basement that had to be at least 10 years old. The lids were a little rusty, but the seals were still intact. (I generally would not recommend this, but he didn’t get sick. He said the food was mushy but otherwise fine.) In our case, we rotate the jars every 1-2 years, and I have yet to see any signs of rust on lids.

On the peat moss – given the controversy with peat bogs being overharvested, I prefer to stick with local materials. I’ve also noticed that during storage, bits of material from the root veggies are left behind in the storage medium, so I wouldn’t recommend reusing it from year to year. I suspect the bits of moss would stick to every crevice of the veggies, too – not unlike sawdust.

Hi! We live off grid in SE Iowa. We are wanting to add a front porch/root cellar like yours to the north side of our house. I haven’t been able to find in the bubel’s book whether the concrete roof/porch floor should be any thicker than usual since it won’t be covered in dirt. How thick is your cellar roof? Also do you think it would be detrimental to put an insulated hatch in the middle of the porch floor, or would it be best to punch a doorway through the basement wall (although that process would terrify me). Also my husband really wants a concrete floor to prevent burrowing creatures. Did you install any wire mess under your rocks/ have you had any issues with animals? Thank you for your post.

You builder should be able to tell you the specs on the concrete. Use of a prestressed slab can help overcome the inherent weakness of concrete in tension. Ours is just under 4 inches thick.

You could put a hatch in through the porch floor, but the access would be more awkward and you’d need to do extra reinforcing in the slab. If you have a contractor with a clue, putting access through the basement should not be a problem. Get someone with good references.

We’ve never had any issues with anything burrowing up from the floor. Critters simply don’t normally dig that deep, at least, not anything around here. The only issue we had was when a mouse got in through a vent pipe, but that was solved by putting mesh over the vents.

The one question I haven’t been able to find an answer for is relating to the venting pipes. We have both venting pipes in, one to the floor and one flush to the ceiling of the root cellar. However, I am unsure how far out of the ground to extend the vent pipes. Does it matter if they are extended to the same height, or should one extend farther than the other? We do have a heavy snow load most years – up to 5 feet cumulative or more depending on some thawing in between snow falls. I was thinking we’d keep them 5 feet out of the ground and watch that snow doesn’t build up above the level of the vent pipe.

It’s okay if the pipes end near each other. The most important thing is to ensure that clear air flow is maintained, so your longer pipes and checking to make sure that they stay clear sounds like a workable solution.

I simply cannot wait until I am able to build a root cellar. Next winter, we will be trying the barrel in the ground, as I intend on storing some root veggies through the winter as feed for the animals. Sure would be nice to have a root cellar though!

A few years ago my father purchased his “retirement” home. A semi updated farm home on a small lake in MN. My question has to do with a room locathed in the basement, well honestly its located outside the basement walls. It looks like a previous owner busted through the exterior wall to make a closet and has lined the walls with cedar. I don’t think there is anything between cedar and dirt. I also know that there currently is no venting and I don’t know about humidity levels. My question is if the parameters were to meet the standards listed, would the cedar be a benefit or detriment to the storage of raw food?

That is a challenge. You need to confirm the exterior (dirt, cinder-block etc) you also need to see if you can figure out what is under the flooring and how the ceiling is built.

Add a thermostat that can track temp over time so you can see if the space freezes or temp swings too much. Assuming there isn’t any major problems, you would need to add insulation to the door and the entire wall adjoining the home, to keep the root cellar cool (isolated from the house). Check the thermostat again

Also you would need to add ventilation somehow; probably two 4″ PCV pipes for vent from above. Dig down penetrate ceiling put pipes through and then heavily seal around the penetration. One pipe goes down to the floor the 2nd up near the ceiling (well secured screens on either end for rodents)

If the walls are dirt and floor is dirt and siding is just cedar that is probably ok. If the cedar has weathered, or if the cedar is still raw it may impact the “smell” to some stored foods till it dries some. some moisture is good, too much is bad, too dry is bad, no airflow is bad, too much is bad – which is why the 4 to 6″ pipes get fresh air but not too much.

We have shelving made from cedar decking material as our shelves for canned goods. The larger shelves are ripped plywood. Shelving matters, so draw it out.

We just built a root cellar into the hill bordering our carport concrete wall. All walls are concrete with 2 feet of dirt on the concrete roof. Only two sides are just concrete. The floor is dirt (crush). This winter, the coldest in the root cellar has been -2 Celsius (28.4 F) when it was our coldest outside at -17 Celsius (1.4 F). My question is should we still insulate with rigid foam the two interior walls that have no earth around them outside? We have not tried a summer yet (it gets very warm here) as it was built this last fall. Would insulating make it warmer or keep it a cooler/consistent temperature in the root cellar? The door is smaller and there is no direct sun on those walls. Long story for a question of to insulation or not to insulate. It does have a six inch vent out of the roof and a 6 inch vent into the carport about a foot and a half up from the ground.

If you’re hitting temps below freezing in the cellar, insulation is a good idea. You should insulate on the outside of the outside, not the inside. Ideally, you want to cover the structure in dimpled foundation membrane to channel water away from the structure instead of into it (and prevent mold), and then layer the insulation over the top of the membrane. You’ll need some sort of protection for the insulation. That might be enough to keep it from freezing, but be aware that cold air temps can penetrate up to four feet into the ground, so you’re likely getting some exterior temperature bleed through the roof.